I have had three Perone-style hives in one apiary, populated for three seasons. By 'Perone-style', I mean they each comprise two Brother Adam Modified Dadant brood boxes, measuring nearly 500mm on each side and 300mm deep (20 inches by 12), with original frames, each with an empty box under them on wooden stands (to keep them from flooding - they are beside a stream that floods).

Each stack has had standard supers on it during summer, but has yet to produce more than a token amount of honey. The bees seem healthy, having had no treatments or medications (other than a powdered sugar treatment in their first year) during that time. They were all in good shape last week when I checked them.

None has shown signs of running out of room, but they could extend combs into the empty box if they wanted to.

Entrances comprise a single 22mm hole in the face of the lower box in each pair. The original slot entrances are not used.

I could split them, simply by removing some frames (if they are still movable) and placing them into an empty body. I may do this to one or two of them this season, at that apiary could do with some more colonies: Brother Adam used to have 20 there!

I can tell you that they appear to be using both boxes, but I haven't opened them to see how much of the lower boxes they have built comb in.

These were colonies I bought from Buckfast Abbey. They are not 'pure' Buckfast any more, of course - in fact they seem to be reverting to darker coloration, indicating that the A.m.m. genes are coming through. I imagine they have swarmed and re-queened themselves several times since I acquired them.

I think it is still very early days to decide whether this system is viable.
I will put up the last part of our pilot study with the mk1 soon, but this hive was empty of bees in September. There was no disease, a hatched queen cell, some aborted queen cells but all was silent and empty. We estimated the comb had filled just under half of the MK1 brood box (105litres in total...so 40 litres or more). The bees that went into this were AMM which do not usually make a big colony, I was and am interested in Oscar Perone's assertion that this would work with any sub-species of bee anywhere that the bees could live.

Other people are trying the MK2 and those results will start coming in this coming summer.

You can wait or give one a go this spring. Other people have tried frames but few people are putting up their results for us to have a look at.
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I imagine they have swarmed and re-queened themselves several times since I acquired them.

That was what I was really wondering about! They are 2 separate issues though, right?

Swarming does include re-queening, of course, but they may also have superseded. I can't tell without dismantling the hives, which is rather contrary to the point of the Perone.

Andy's results are likely to be more authentic, as mine are only quasi-Perone in reality. I had to go for higher entrances, as that apiary has flooded occasionally and will have done so this winter, for sure. I used Bro. Adam's old boxes, frames and stands 'because they were there'...

As nearly all of us are 'hobbyists' here on this site, and by that I mean we keep bees for reasons other than commercial incomes, and we are from all over the world, from different climatic zones, having different sub-species of bee (in the right or wrong place for them) and subject to huge differences in pesticide accumulation and poisoning, Varroa and associated viruses seem to be a problem in some places and not others and it goes on.

What we can do is get empirical data via this site and others and then we can start looking for patterns in the data, so we are waiting on data.

For us, our one Perone mk1 has huge significance and there is a danger that when we put up our results people will see it as the results for all Perone hives not just our one tiny experiment.
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I just wanted to add that my caution is based on a common theme of someone who knows someone who has tried a hive and for one reason or another it has not worked (in the way the person wanted it to, the bees do what they do) and that hive type is condemned. As is said no one particularly gives significance to the failures of Langs or Nationals which are huge, but fail to get a small cast through six months of sub zero temperatures in a TBH almost makes national news!

I just wanted to add that my caution is based on a common theme of someone who knows someone who has tried a hive and for one reason or another it has not worked (in the way the person wanted it to, the bees do what they do) and that hive type is condemned. As is said no one particularly gives significance to the failures of Langs or Nationals which are huge, but fail to get a small cast through six months of sub zero temperatures in a TBH almost makes national news!

Just what I keep banging on about. Its usually not the type of hive, though some are better than others depending on the conditions and sub-species. Often it comes down to how you handle the bees, parasite loads, genetics and a good dose of shear dumb luck if your bees survive.

But you are right, if your hive is one of the less common used ones it is often blamed for the failure not the other factors which are often more important.

As is said no one particularly gives significance to the failures of Langs or Nationals which are huge, but fail to get a small cast through six months of sub zero temperatures in a TBH almost makes national news!

Which if you are following Oscar's method you don't do. That is one of the things that I really like about it, put the swarm in and don't touch for 15 months! Do I have that sort of patience or should I put a window in?

My connection with the Perone hive happens because I donated a prime swarm to Vernon last year. I collected it on Mother's Day, May 12, 2013. He was looking for a swarm and I had no spare hive to place it. I was happy because my swarm (it came from a Warre) was not going into a Langstroth hive. Yes, I have 'attitude' when it comes to Langs. When we found that he had built his own hive, we knew our swarm was going to the right person.

So I finally got my bees today and got stung will picking them up - I foolishly wore black - the color of most bee enemies like bears.

An hour later I finally got home with them and the installation went pretty smoothly considering the insert I made for the NUC was about 1/8" too small! I sent my husband back to the house to get a hammer and a chisel.

Some pics:
[url=https://flic.kr/p/nAstPC]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/nAdCpQ]

I'm a little worried about that last pic because there doesn't seem to be much space between the frames. What if the queen gets squished? I'll take a peek tomorrow. If it looks really tight I'll take out the feeder frame to give more room.

Yes, you need to feed. This colony will not get to the resources on the outside because they lack enough foragers. They will shrink in size during the coming weeks, you end up with the half of the colony in three weeks. Until the new brood emerges and the broodnest is growing again, it'll need a lot of time. If you want to fill that box before winter, you better feed.

It took till 11 to warm up enough to see some activity but it's been perfect and there's lots of activity out of both entrances and I did see some full pollen baskets. I did see two different colors of pollen which is a little odd because I had heard they only collect from one source each day.

The deep orange was probably dandelion which is just coming out. Light yellow could've been maple (it was a cold spring) or maybe willow.

I did see two different colors of pollen which is a little odd because I had heard they only collect from one source each day.

I think you may have misunderstood this information.
An individual bee will mostly only work one type of flower each day or often for several days/weeks but there will be other bees working other flowers (unless they are on a monocrop) so it is normal and healthy to see more than one colour of pollen being taken into the hive each day.

Congratulations CJ! You’ve provided a beautiful, well-sheltered setting for you spiffy Perone hive. Now that you’ve introduced your bees your work is done for a year or so. Relax and allow the bees to manage their own colony. That is the essence of the Perone approach.

With all the flowers in your area I don’t see any compelling reason to feed syrup, an “empty calories” food. Plenty of high-calorie nectar is available from flowers near your apiary, and wax, propolis and pollen collected the old-fashioned way are just as important to the success of your colony.

Expect the population of your hive to decline some during the first month whether you feed or not. Don’t worry, and certainly don’t take corrective action. The numbers should build up into the Fall and explode next Spring. You will probably see a decline in population just before Winter. With your seasonal Vermont climate, comb will probably fill only a fraction of the brood box by then. My Perone colony over-wintered nicely occupying no more than a fourth of the brood box space.

Don’t add a super during the first year. Place a lid directly over the brood box grid bars and then don’t touch it. The bees will seal the spaces between the grid bars and the lid with propolis, creating a snug between-combs environment they can keep heated during winter.

...Now that you’ve introduced your bees your work is done for a year or so. Relax and allow the bees to manage their own colony. That is the essence of the Perone approach.

With all the flowers in your area I don’t see any compelling reason to feed syrup, an “empty calories” food. Plenty of high-calorie nectar is available from flowers near your apiary, and wax, propolis and pollen collected the old-fashioned way are just as important to the success of your colony.

Expect the population of your hive to decline some during the first month whether you feed or not. Don’t worry, and certainly don’t take corrective action. The numbers should build up into the Fall and explode next Spring. You will probably see a decline in population just before Winter. With your seasonal Vermont climate, comb will probably fill only a fraction of the brood box by then. My Perone colony over-wintered nicely occupying no more than a fourth of the brood box space.

Don’t add a super during the first year. Place a lid directly over the brood box grid bars and then don’t touch it. The bees will seal the spaces between the grid bars and the lid with propolis, creating a snug between-combs environment they can keep heated during winter.

Thanks Vernon, lots of good info there.

I will try to relax but I'll rest easier if they've made it thru the winter!

There are tons of trees in bloom and lots of dandelion which I understand to be mediocre bee food. I spotted my first honey bee on a dandelion! I made a quart of very light syrup (2 water to 1 sugar) and am putting a little bit in front of the hive in shallow dishes with rocks. I probably wont do any more than that.

Thanks for the heads up about a population drop. This would be true even with a NUC?

I have put some canvas over the top grid so they wont be able to access the honey supers. I'm a little surprised to hear that they will seal the spaces between the grid bars. So I guess next spring, if they make it, I'll take the canvas off and give them access to the honey supers.

Sorry CJ, I missed that your new bees are from a nuc. I can’t speak from experience about nucs, since I populated my first Perone hive from a swarm (last year) and the other from a package (last month).

I first noticed dead and dying bees from the swarm during the third week. Probably most of these were original swarm workers dying of “old age.” For about a month after that there were declining numbers of foragers entering and leaving the hive. New comb construction probably wasn’t proceeding quickly enough to allow the colony to replace its numbers. When I decided to remove the super and replace it with a wooden lid I saw how little comb had been built. After winter was over I switched the wooden lid for one of see-through plexiglas. That’s when I observed that the small spaces between each occupied bar and the wooden lid had been closed with propolis (a clever bit of winterizing, for an invertebrate).

A lot of my package bees died in transit. A lot more died during their first week in the hive, when the foragers seemed lethargic and disorganized. I thought the colony might be DOA. But after that first week the foragers finally got busy, and now I have high hopes. However, the population will certainly decline over the short term until more comb is built. My overall conclusion is that packages are a poor way to start a Perone hive.

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Quality Top Bar Hives by Andrew Vidler

Conserving wild bees

Research suggests that bumble bee boxes have a very low success rate in actually attracting bees into them. We find that if you create an environment where first of all you can attract mice inside, such as a pile of stones, a drystone wall, paving slabs with intentionally made cavities underneath, this will increase the success rate.

Most bumble bee species need a dry space about the size a football, with a narrow entrance tunnel approximately 2cm in diameter and 20 cm long. Most species nest underground along the base of a linear feature such as a hedge or wall. Sites need to be sheltered and out of direct sunlight.